Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Job 19:24
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!
24. In Job 19:23 Job longed that his words were written. But ordinary writing is perishable. And now he desires that his words were hewn in indelible characters upon the rock. The “lead” was probably run into the traces cut in the stone. It need not be said that “the rock” like “the book” means merely rock, and not any particular rock.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
That they were graven – Cut in, or sculptured – as is done on stones. That they might become thus a permanent record.
With an iron pen – A stylus, or an engraving tool – for so the word ( et) means. The instrument formerly used for writing or engraying was a small, sharp-pointed piece of iron or steel, that was employed to mark on lead or stone – somewhat in the form of small graying tools now. When the writing was on wax, the instrument was made with a flat head, that it could be obliterated by pressing it on or passing it over the wax.
The reason why Job mentions the iron pen here is, that he wished a perment record. He did not desire one made with paint or chalk, but one which would convey his sentiments down to future times.
And lead – That is, either engraved on lead, or more probably with lead. It was customary to cut the letters deep in stone, and then to fill fill them up with lead, so that the record became more permanent. This I take to be the meaning here. The Hebrew will scarcely allow of the supposition that Job meant that the records should be made on plates of lead – though such plates were used early, but perhaps not until after the time of Job.
In the rock – It was common, at an early period, to make inscriptions on the smooth surface of a rock. Perhaps the first thai were made were on stones, which were placed as way marks, or monuments over the dead – as we now make such inscriptions on grave-stones. Then it became common to record any memorable transaction – as a battle – on stones or rocks; and perhaps, also, sententious and apothegmatical remarks were recorded in this manner, to admonish travelers, or to transmit them to posterity. Numerous inscriptions of this kind are found by travelers in the East, on tombs, and on rocks in the desert. All that can be appropriate here is a notice of such early inscriptions of that kind in Arabia, as would render it probable that they existed in the time of Job, or such as indicate great antiquity. Happily we are at no loss for such inscriptions on rocks in the country where Job lived.
The Wady Mokatta, the cliffs of which bear these inscriptions, is a valley entering Wady Sheikh, and bordering the upper regions of the Sinai mountains. It extends for about three hours march, and in most places its rocks present abrupt cliffs, twenty or thirty feet high. From these cliffs large masses have separated, and lie at the bottom of the valley. The cliffs and rocks are thickly covered with inscriptions, which are continued at intervals of a few hundred paces only, for at least the distance of two hours and a half. Burckhardt, in his travels from Akaba to Cairo, by Mount Sinai, observed many inscriptions on the rocks, part of which he has copied. See his Travels in Syria, Lond. Ed. pp. 506, 581, 582, 606, 613, 614. Pococke, who also visited the regions of Mount Sinai in 1777, has given a description of the inscriptions which he saw on the rocks at Mount Sinai. Vol. i. 148, be says, There are on many of the rocks, both near these mountains and in the road, a great many inscriptions in an ancient character; many of them I copied, and observed that most of them were not cut, but stained, making the granite of a lighter color, and where the stone had scaled, I could see the stain had sunk into the stone.
Numerous specimens of these inscriptions may be seen in Pococke, vol. i. p. 148. These inscriptions were also observed by Robinson and Smith, and are described by them in Biblical Researches, vol. i. 108, 118, 119, 123, 161, 167. They are first mentioned by Cosmas, about 535 a.d. He supposed them to be the work of the ancient Hebrews, and says that certain Jews, who had read them, explained them to him as noting the journey of such an one, out of such a tribe, in such a year and month. They have also been noticed by many early travelers, as Neitzschitz, p. 149; Moncongs, i. p. 245; and also by Niebuhr in his Reisebeschr. i. p. 250. The copies of them given by Pococke and Niebuhr are said to be very imperfect; those by Seetzen are better, and those made by Burckhardt are tolerably accurate. Rob. Bib. Research. i. 553. A large number of them have been copied and published by Mr. Grey, in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, vol. iii. pt. 1, Lond. 1832; consisting of one hundred and seventy-seven in the unknown character, nine in Greek, and one in Latin. These inscriptions, which so long excited the curiosity of travelers, have been recently deciphered (in the year 1839) by Professor Beer, of the University of Leipzig. He had turned his attention to them in the year 1833, but without success.
In the year 1839 his attention was again turned to them, and after several months of the most persevering application, he succeeded in making out the alphabet, and was enabled to read all the inscriptions which have been copied, with a good degree of accuracy. According to the results of this examination, the characters of the Sinaitic inscriptions belong to a distinct and independent alphabet. Some of the letters are wholly unique; the others have more or less affinity with the Palmyrene, and particularly with the Estrangelo and the Cufic. They are written from right to left. The contempts of the inscriptions, so far as examined, consist only of proper names, preceded by a word which is usually shalom, peace, though occasionally some other word is used. In one or two instances the name is followed by a sentence which has not yet been deciphered. The names are those common in Arabic. It is a remarkable fact that not one Jewish or Christian name has been found.
The question, as to the writers of these inscriptions, receives very little light from their contents. A word at the end of some of them may be so read as to affirm that they were pilgrims, and this opinion Professor Beer adopts; but this is not certain. That the writers were Christians, seems apparent from many of the crosses connected with the inscriptions. The age, also, of the inscriptions, receives no light from their conents, as no date has yet been read. Beer supposes that the greater part of them could not have been written earlier than the fourth century. Little light, therefore, is cast upon the question who wrote them; what was their design; in what age they were written, or who were the pilgrims who wrote them. See Rob. Bib. Research. i. 552-556. That there were such records in the time of Job, is probable.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 24. Iron pen and lead] Some suppose that the meaning of this place is this: the iron pen is the chisel by which the letters were to be deeply cut in the stone or rock; and the lead was melted into those cavities in order to preserve the engraving distinct. But this is not so natural a supposition as what is stated above; that Job refers to the different kinds of writing or perpetuating public events, used in his time: and the quotations from Pliny and Pausanias confirm the opinion already expressed.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
An iron pen; of which also there is mention Jer 17:1.
And lead; or, or lead; or, with lead; the particle and being oft so used, as Gen 4:20; Exo 1:6; Jer 22:7. For this lead may be either,
1. The writing pen, which might be either of iron or of lead; for though lead be of itself too soft, yet there was an art of tempering lead with other metals to such a degree of hardness that it could pierce into a rock; as they did-also temper brass, so that they could make bows and swords of it. Or,
2. The writing table; for the ancients did use to write divers things in lead, as is well known. Or,
3. The writing ink, as I may call it; for they used to grave the letters in a stone with an iron tool, and then to fill up the cuts or furrows made in the stone with lead, that the words might be more plainly seen and read.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
24. pengraver.
leadpoured into theengraven characters, to make them better seen [UMBREIT].Not on leaden plates; for it was “in the rock” that theywere engraved. Perhaps it was the hammer that was of “lead,”as sculptors find more delicate incisions are made by it, than by aharder hammer. FOSTER (One Primeval Language) has shown thatthe inscriptions on the rocks in Wady-Mokatta, along Israel’s routethrough the desert, record the journeys of that people, as CosmasIndicopleustes asserted, A.D.535.
for everas long as therock lasts.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!] Or “that they were written with an iron pen and lead, that they were cut or hewn out in a rock for ever”; not with both an iron and leaden pen, or pencil; for the marks of the latter are not durable, and much less could it be used on a rock according to our version; but the sense seems to be, that they might be written with an iron pen, which was used in writing, Jer 17:1; upon a sheet of lead, as the Vulgate Latin version; for it was usual in ancient times, as Pliny q and others relate, for books to be made of sheets of lead, and for public records to be engrossed, as in plates of brass, so sometimes in sheets of lead, for the perpetuity of them; or else it refers to the cutting out of letters on stones, as the law was on two tables of stone, and filling up the incisions or cuttings with lead poured into them, as Jarchi suggests: so Pliny, r speaks of stone pillars in Arabia and the parts adjacent, with unknown characters on them; also this may have respect to the manner of writing on mountains and rocks formerly, as the Israelites at or shortly after the times of Job did. There are now, in the wilderness through which the Israelites passed, hills called Gebel-el-mokatab, the written mountains, engraved with unknown ancient characters, out into the hard marble rock; supposed to be the ancient Hebrew, written by the Israelites for their diversion and improvement which are observed by some modern travellers s. In the last age, Petrus a Valle and Thomas a Novaria saw them; the latter of which transcribed some of them, some of which seemed to be like to the Hebrew letters now in use, and others to the Samaritans; and some agreed with neither t; and Cosmoss the Egyptian u, who wrote A. D. 535, declares on his own testimony, that all the mansions of the Hebrews in the wilderness were to be seen in stones with Hebrew letters engraved on them, which seemed to be an account of their journeys in it. The inscription on a stone at Horeb, brought from thence by the above mentioned Thomas a Novaria, and which Kircher w has explained thus,
“God shall make a virgin conceive, and she shall bring forth a son,”
is thought by learned men to be of a later date, and the explication of it is not approved of by them. x Job may have in view his sepulchre hewn out of a rock, as was usual, and as that was our Lord was laid in; and so his wish might be that the following words were his funeral epitaph, and that they might be cut out and inscribed upon his sepulchral monument, his rocky grave; that everyone that passed by might read his strong expressions of faith in a living Redeemer, and the good hope he had of a blessed resurrection.
q Nat. Hist. l. 13. c. 11. Alex. ab Alex. l. 2. c. 30. Pausaniae Messenica, sive, l. 4. p. 266. & Boeotica, sive, l. 9. p. 588. r Nat. Hist. l. 6. c. 28. & 29. s See a Journal from Cairo, &c. in 1722, p. 45, 46. and Egmont and Heyman’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 171, 181. t Antiqu. Eccles. Orient. p. 147. u Apud Montfaucon, tom. 2. p. 205. w Prodrom. Copt. c. 8. p. 201, 207. x Vide Hottinger. Praefat. ad Cipp. Hebr. p. 6, 7, 8. Wagenseil Carmin. Lipman. Confut. p. 429, &c.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
24. Since ink, parchment, and metal may perish, Job desires that the momentous truth he is about to utter may be chiseled into the rock; and, that the characters may be forever legible, he would have them filled in with lead. A gradation of thought is intended, as Holemann has indicated first the writing, then the inscribing in a book, and last the chiseling into the rock forever. Rocks abound in the East bearing inscriptions not only of historical events, but of legal precepts, prayers, etc. While no one knows that the wish of Job was ever fulfilled, his precious thoughts stand recorded upon the rock of heavenly truth. Generation after generation have gazed with wondering and trusting hearts upon these imperishable lines, and thus shall it be so long as rocks and mountains stand.
THE INSCRIPTION JOB’S CONFESSION OF FAITH.
Such is its momentousness that we give the Hebrew with a literal translation, and in the reverse order, as in the original:
| | |
living (is) | my Redeemer | I know | And
| – |
shall stand | on the dust | the last.
And – | |
this they destroy | my skin. | And after
| |
God | I shall see. | And from my flesh
| | |
for myself | I shall see. | I, | Whom,
– | |
and not another | behold, | And my eyes
| |
within me | my reins. | Are consumed
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Job 19:24 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
Ver. 24. That they were graven with an iron pen, &c. ] That my words were not only scripta sed sculpta, written, but graven in a rock, as the laws of various nations were cut in brass or marble; and as monuments and epitaphs are graven on tombs for remembrance of those that are dead.
And lead
In the rock
For ever!
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
graven = engraven. See translation below.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
graven: Exo 28:11, Exo 28:12, Exo 28:21, Exo 32:16, Deu 27:2, Deu 27:3, Deu 27:8, Jer 17:1
Reciprocal: Job 31:35 – mine Psa 102:18 – This Isa 8:1 – write Isa 30:8 – write Jer 30:2 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
19:24 That they were graven with {p} an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!
(p) He protests that despite his sore passions his religion is perfect and that he in not a blasphemer as they judged him.